Distributional Impact of Privatization Conference
February 24, 2003
Speaker Biographies
Gover Barja has served as a graduate level professor of the Bolivian Catholic University
since 1995. In 1997 he created the short program in economics of regulation contributing
in regulatory training over the years. Barja received his Ph.D. in Economics and MS in
Statistics from Utah State University. He has researched and written on the Bolivian
experience with reform in infrastructure industries for WIDER/UN and ECLAC/UN.
Currently, he also consults the Bolivian Regulatory System and the World Bank.
Nancy Birdsall is the founding President of the Center for Global Development. Prior to
launching the center, she worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
focusing on issues of globalization and inequality. From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was
Executive Vice-President of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the
regional development banks. She has also spent 14 years in research, policy, and
management positions at the World Bank, most recently as Director of the Policy
Research Department. Birdsall has written more than a dozen books and monographs,
including, most recently, Delivering on Debt Relief: From IMF Gold to a New Aid
Architecture.
Michael Bleyzer is co-founder, President and CEO of SigmaBleyzer Corporation, an
American-Ukrainian Investment Banking group. In 2001, the Bleyzer Family established
The Bleyzer Foundation to help the countries of the Former Soviet Union in their
transitions to market economy. Bleyzer is a member of the Foreign Investment Advisory
Council established by the Ukrainian President and has provided advice to a number of
current and former senior members of the Ukrainian government, advocating an
improved investment and business climate and accelerated privatization and reform of
public administration. In his 15-year career with the Exxon Corporation and Ernst &
Young, Bleyzer consulted numerous countries on management issues.
Alberto Chong is a Senior Research Economist at the Research Department of the InterAmerican Development Bank. He pursued graduate studies at Harvard and Cornell
Universities and received a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell. His research interests are
mostly related with applied microeconomic issues in developing countries, particularly,
privatization, political governance and corporate governance issues. He has published
papers in several academic journals, and has co-edited a book on private participation in
infrastructure in Latin America (with Jose Miguel Sanchez) and on the benefits of
privatization in Latin America (with Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes).
Navroz Dubash is a Senior Associate in the Institutions and Governance Program at the
World Resources Institute (WRI). He currently co-manages a project examining changing
patterns of international financial flows and their social and environmental outcomes. His
most recent work on privatization examined reforms in the electricity sector and was
published as a WRI publication entitled, Power Politics: Equity and Environment in
Electricity Reform.
Huberto Ennis obtained his Ph.D in Economics from Cornell University in the year
2000. Since then, he has been working as an economist at the Research Department of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He also has a Masters in Public Policy from the Di
Tella Institute in Argentina and has taught as a visiting professor at the National
University of La Plata, Argentina. His research interests include monetary theory,
financial intermediation, macroeconomics and economic theory.
Antonio Estache joined the World Bank in 1985, where he has worked as both a
regulatory and public sector economist. He was a core member of the development team
for the World Development Report 1994 (Infrastructure). Before coming to the World
Bank, Mr. Estache worked as an economist at the IMF Institute, teaching econometric
and macroeconomic forecasting models. Mr. Estache has advised the governments of
Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil on regulatory matters and has written extensively in the
area. His publications include, Decentralizing Infrastructure: Advantages and Limitations
(editor, 1995) and "Regulating Water Concessions in Argentina" in Public Policy for the
Private Sector (World Bank, 1996). Mr. Estache is a Belgian national and received his
Ph.D. in Economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1995.
Stan Gacek was named AFL-CIO's Assistant Director for International Affairs in
February 1997. This post holds responsibility for the US labor federation's policy in Latin
America and the Caribbean. From 1979-1984, Gacek was Assistant General Counsel to
the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), a North
American labor organization representing 1.4 million employees in the food and retail
industries. From 1984 to 1997, Gacek served as Assistant Director for International
Affairs at the UFCW, forging ties of working solidarity with counterpart unions in Latin
America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. He is a recognized observer of Brazilian labor,
having published and spoken widely on the subject. He received his BA from Harvard
University and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1978.
Carol Graham is Vice President and Director of the Governance Studies Program at the
Brookings Institution and a Visiting Professor of Economics at The Johns Hopkins
University. Graham has served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Managing Director of
the International Monetary Fund, where she provided advice on institutional reform
issues. She has also been a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank, the
World Bank, United Nations Development Program, and the Harvard Institute for
International Development, helping to design safety net and social insurance programs in
Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. She has authored several books, including
Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies and
Private Markets for Public Goods: Raising the Stakes in Economic Reform.
Gary Jefferson, a professor of trade and finance at Brandeis University, focuses his
research on China's economic transformation and technical innovation and institutional
change in China's enterprise system. Jefferson's research, which involves collaboration
with Chinese agencies, policy institutes, and universities, has received support from the
Henry Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and
the World Bank. He has published in a wide range of academic journals, both in the U.S.
and China. His recent book, Enterprise Reform in China: Ownership, Transition, and
Performance contains 12 articles that he and colleagues have written on the subject of
enterprise restructuring in China.
Albert Keidel is Acting Director of the Office of East Asian Nations in the U.S.
Department of the Treasury. He is a development economist specializing in East Asia,
with an emphasis on China. Before joining Treasury in 2001, he covered China's
economic trends, system reforms, poverty and country risk as Senior Economist in the
World Bank office in Beijing. He has worked in China, Japan, and Korea and has taught
graduate economics courses on China, Japan and development. He currently teaches
China's economy at SAIS. He received a BA in International Affairs from Princeton and
a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard.
Malathy Knight-John is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Colombo,
Sri Lanka. Her areas of specialization are public enterprise reform, privatization, utility
regulation, and competition policy. She has been involved in several projects in these
areas both for the Sri Lankan government and for external agencies and also has a
number of publications on these subjects, including Competition Policy and Utility
Regulation: The Sri Lankan Experience and a forthcoming report on infrastructure
privatization in Sri Lanka (coordinated by the World Bank). An alumnus of Swarthmore
College (BA) and University of Colombo (MA), she is also a member of the governmentappointed Policy Development Steering Committees on ICT/Telecom Development and
Land Transport.
Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva is Assistant Professor at the University of the Americas in
Puebla, Mexico. He also collaborates with Princeton University on the Privatization
Program. He received his MA and Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University.
Nora Lustig currently works at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico. From
1989-1997, Lustig was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has also served
as a consultant for the Mexican government, the Inter-American Development Bank and
the World Bank, and has worked for the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America.
Lustig's research has been in the field of development economics, with particular
emphasis on the determinants of poverty and inequality; labor markets and living
standards; economic crises, adjustment costs and safety nets; and, public policies for
poverty reduction.
Dilip Mookherjee teaches in Boston University's Economics department and serves on
the Advisory Panel of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund.
His research interests include development, inequality, contract and organization theory
and behavioral game theory. He has written extensively on these topics, and serves as
Director of the Institute of Economic Development at Boston University. Mookherjee
completed his Ph. D. in Economics at the London School of Economics.
John Nellis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, co-directing a
project to examine the effects of privatization on income and wealth distribution in
developing and transitional economies. From 1984 to 2000, Nellis was at the World Bank,
where he dealt with privatization, public enterprise reform, the transition from a planned
to a market system, and governance and public sector management issues in some fifty
countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the transition states in East and Central
Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has authored or co-authored four books and 30
other publications on the above topics, including Time to Rethink Privatization in
Transition Economies? Prior to joining the Bank, Nellis had also been a Professor of
Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and a Professor of
International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He spent six years in
Africa with the Ford Foundation, in Tanzania, Kenya and Tunisia.
Minxin Pei, Senior Associate and Co-Director of the Carnegie Endowment's China
Program, specializes in democracy issues particularly related to China and East Asia. His
research covers a range of subjects: Chinese politics, economic reform, East Asian
politics, U.S. relations with East Asian countries, and democratization in developing
countries. He has published extensively on these topics and is currently researching the
politics of legal reform in China. Before joining the Endowment, Pei was a faculty
member of the politics department at Princeton University.
Santiago Pinto is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at
West Virginia University. He has also served as Visiting Professor at Syracuse University,
New York, from 2001-2002. His educational experience includes a Ph.D. in Economics
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 2001.
Alfonso Revollo serves on the Board of Executive Directors at the World Bank and is the
former Minister of Capitalization for Bolivia.
Luis Rivas works at the Ministry of Finance in Managua, Nicaragua, as Economic
Advisor to the Minister.
Edilberto Segura is Chief Economist of SigmaBleyzer and Chairman of the Advisory
Board of The Bleyzer Foundation. He is also a Fellow and Visiting Professor of the Said
Business School of the University of Oxford, UK, where he lectures on emerging capital
markets in the MBA Program. Before joining SigmaBleyzer in 1998, Segura worked at
the World Bank for 27 years as Country Director and Technical Director. Segura holds
Ph.D. (Finance and Economics) and MA (Economics) degrees from Columbia University
in NY, an MBA degree from Stanford University in California, and an Industrial
Engineering degree from Peru. He has written extensively in the areas of financial,
industrial and economic development in emerging markets.
Louise Shelley is a Professor and Director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption
Center (TraCCC) at American University. She has been writing on the problems of
organized crime penetration into the privatization process since the late 1980s. She has
known Professor Svetlana Glinkina since that time, and they have shared a common
interest in the problem.
Jian Su, a Ph.D. candidate of the Graduate School of International Economics and
Finance, Brandeis University, studies development and transition. Having worked in a
big state-owned enterprise (SOE) of China as an engineer for 5 years (1987-1992), Su is
very familiar with the insides of SOEs. Presently he is studying the ownership
restructuring and privatization of Chinese SOEs; his working papers include The
Determinants of Decentralized Privatization: Theory and Evidence from China and
Globalization and Privatization: Evidence from China. Su worked as an assistant
professor at Beijing University, from 1995 to 2000.
Carlos Eduardo Velez joined the World Bank in 1999 and has been working on poverty
and inequality issues in Colombia and Brazil. His main research interests are related to
income distribution dynamics, incidence analysis, welfare and poverty determinants and
targeting. Previously Vélez worked at the Inter-American Development Bank's Poverty
and Inequality Advisory Unit. Vélez has also taught public economics at Universidad de
los Andes and Universidad de Antioquia -Colombia.
Christine Wallich is Senior Economic and Policy Advisor at the World Bank. Since
1978, Wallich has held a number of positions with the Bank, including Principal
Economist for China Department (1990-97), Country Director for Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Lead Economist for Central Europe and Principal Economist in Russia. In June 2003, she
will assume her responsibilities as Country Director for Bangladesh. Wallich received her
Ph. D in Economics from Yale University and has written about public finance and fiscal
decentralization, financial sector restructuring and post conflict reconstruction.
Elizabeth Williamson reports from the Metro Desk at The Washington Post, and has
spent nine years in Bulgaria, Russia and Poland working as a journalist, most recently for
The Wall Street Journal. While writing for The Wall Street Journal's monthly magazine,
Central European Economic Review, from 1994 to 99, she covered the CEE region's
transition from command to market economy and was particularly interested in that
transition's impact on the lives of workers and rural laborers, who supplied the muscle
behind the region's political change in 1989 to 1991, but grew increasingly dissatisfied
with how the economic results of those changes affected them.
John Williamson has been a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics
(IIE) since 1981. From 1996-99 he was on leave from the Institute to serve as Chief
Economist for the South Asia Region of the World Bank. He was an economic consultant
to the UK Treasury in 1968-70, where he worked on a range of international financial
issues, and an advisor to the International Monetary Fund in 1972-74. His publications
have mainly concerned international monetary issues and include Exchange Rate
Regimes for Emerging Markets: Reviving the Intermediate Option and (with Nancy
Birdsall) Delivering on Debt Relief: From IMF Gold to a New Aid Architecture.
Kenneth S. Yalowitz retired from the US Department of State in 2001 after 36 years as a
career diplomat and member of the Senior Foreign Service. He served twice as a US
ambassador: to the Republic of Belarus from 1994-97 and to Georgia from 1998-2001.
His last service in Moscow was from 1991-93 as minister-counselor for economic affairs
at the time the privatization program began and as acting Deputy Chief of Mission.
Yalowitz completed his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin and holds a
Russian Institute Certificate, MA and Master of Philosophy degree from Columbia
University. Presently, he is an adjunct professor of government at Georgetown University
and a diplomat in residence at American University.